Stop reading right now if you haven’t finished book 7
23 July 2007I’m serious. Stop reading, I’m about to have no regard for people who haven’t finished the book yet.
Okay.
I didn’t get home with my book until circa 2ish because I was working at a midnight event back in NJ (dressed as a wizard- photos to come) where the cover illustrator was signing and it was something of a madhouse. It was also all very John Mellancamp, as my station at the party was co-anchored by a girl who used to babysit for my little brother, and right next to a station being manned by my kindergarten teacher, and about 8 kids I used to babysit for came through the line and said fun things to me like “Are you still in college?” My station at the Harry party was not something like transfiguration or care of magical creatures, it was… wait for it… talk about the publishing process! Because if there’s one thing Harry Potter fans want to know on the eve of book 7, it’s how a book gets made! Truthfully, this went a lot better than I thought it would, and most of the kids were generally interested in what I had to say and thought it was cool to look at picture book sketches and original manuscripts and galleys and stuff. Everyone else was way, way, way more in character than I was– at one point I asked Dolores Umbridge where the bathroom was (we were in the newly renovated library for the first part of the party) and she handed me an educational decree saying that I was prohibited from speaking. Sigh. Come on, people! Beyond that, my favorite part of the evening was when a 16ish year old boy came through the line and, as the illustrator was signing his book, casually said “Can you throw your number in there, too? We could get lunch sometime.” Bold move, friend.
Okay. The book: I really could have lived without the first 600 or so pages. It wasn’t a book for me until they got back to Hogwarts. I really missed McGonegal, and the fact that she took all of negative 2 seconds to decide that she was going to fight for Harry was the first time I cried reading it (specifically, when she brings the suits of armor to life and tells them to defend the school. That just killed me). I really wanted book 7 to wrap up the way Holes or A Prayer for Owen Meany wraps up, where things that you didn’t even realize were important tie together in a perfect way, but I didn’t get that. Some of the plot points just seemed entirely too convenient… you’re camping in the woods where no one can find you, but you just happen to hear Dean Thomas and a goblin having an enormously important conversation nearby that changes your entire course of action? No one has noticed that Dumbledore’s doppleganger is a bartender in town? Or at the end when Ron happens to be able to speak parseltongue? And the chamber of secrets is still open all this time? Huhwhatnow?
I’ve reread the last chunk of the book- from when they get back to Hogwarts until the end- and I’m entirely happy with how the book, and the series, ends. There are some things I want answered (Who is headmaster when Harry’s kids get to school?) but they’re petty little questions and not large annoying ones. I think having Harry live, and having the Disney movie epilogue, really solidifies that this is a kids’ series. She could have taken this in a really dark direction and, while that might have been really interesting, I don’t think I would have felt as warm and fuzzy afterwards. Also, she was really careful to not have Harry, Ron, Hermione or any of the other kids ever kill anyone. Even after Draco effectively tries to kill Harry in the Room of Requirement, they still save his life twice, and Voldemort is killed by his own curse backfiring when Harry disarms him (I also loved that Harry has a “signature move”). Bellatrix is taken out by Molly Weasley (in one of my favorite, favorite parts of the battle, especially because she calls her a bitch), because she obvious has to die, being evil and all, but none of the kids have to do it themselves. (Also, Bellatrix and Voldemort are totally making the beast with two backs, right? There’s one part where she says V’s name “as a lover would,” and when she’s killed, he shows some actual, albeit brief emotion. I’m going to go ahead and extrapolate here. Girl is NASTY. Doing it with the dark lord. I’d hate to be her gynocologist).
But watching everyone decide instantly to fight even after Harry has been MIA for a year was fantastic, especially when Neville did his whole Braveheart “when hell freezes over” speech (could have used some more battle scenes of Neville’s grandma kicking ass and taking names. Loved the image of the house elves stabbing people in the feet, though), and when Harry visits his old house and finds that people have been leaving him messages there. I’m happy that all of the main characters made it through, and that we know they’re okay two decades later (and we know that Ginny had relatively no say whatsoever in naming her kids, but what can you do. That’s what you get for marrying the Boy Who Lived). My favorite part of the epilogue is when Lily asks why everyone on the train is staring at them, as if it’s possible that Harry’s raising his kids to not know how famous he is until they go off to school. It was a little weird picturing Harry, like, slightly balding with a beer belly at 36, but I am fine with that mental image because it lets me know that he got the girl and everything turned out okay (what’s he doing for a living, though? Is he an Auror? Or does he get to automatically retire having vanquished the dark lord?). Similarly, I was a little weirded out when his parent’s gravestones had years on them and you could figure out that Harry was born in 1980, even though there were less obvious clues to this in the earlier books (that I, of course, can’t think of now…). I think, though, that it’s probably better to have SOME ties to actual time and space than to have none, and allow people to impose whatever constraints they want to on the story… like, having Grindelwald die in 1945 after building a prison with “for the greater good” stamped across it to house people he considered inferior to his own race is obvious enough that it seems like she’s saying “Yes, I’m thinking of the same thing you are, and I know you can’t write a story about a dark lord and genocide without everyone’s minds going to the same place” but NOT “this is a direct allegory that should be used in classrooms.” (When I got to the description of Grindelwald’s prison, my dad was watching the British open in the next room and I yelled to him “Dad, what was the inscription over the doors of Auschwitz?” and he called back “‘Work will make you free.’ {Pause}….WHY?” implied: You’re scaring me). I think it’s brilliant how she handled the ties to the world of her readers, and I didn’t appreciate that fully until this book.
I’m sure there are a million things I’m missing (Oh man, PERCY! How fantastic that he (a) came back and (b) was blatantly ignored by his whole family until he apologized?) and we’ll all be coming back to this all week. NOW what am I going to read?
4 Responses to “Stop reading right now if you haven’t finished book 7”
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:22 am
I’m so hung up on things like years and ages that I’m still going, “Whaaaaa?!” about the fact that James and Lily had their kid at 20, and that Harry and Ginny were 24 and 23 when they started breeding. Although as Kyle points out, there are only like 500 wizards and it’s not like they go to college. Still. Ack.
I feel like this discussion on Friday is going to involve shouting.
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:28 am
Amazingly, I feel almost exactly like you do about the book. I enjoyed it, especially the last hundred pages or so, but could have done without much of the earlier stuff.
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:28 am
Good points! I just wanted to add that I feel like I’m going to be defending the epilogue for the rest of my life, b/c I thought it was great. a) Harry acknowledges that Snape was the bravest man he ever knew. b) They have a nodding-hello relationship with Draco — love his ambiguity, not good, not evil, just a dude. c) Brings things full circle, back to the very beginning of the books: life goes on, kids will still go to Hogwarts, kids will still be nervous about how they’re going to be sorted, but YOU ALWAYS HAVE A CHOICE.
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:30 am
Oh, Mags, good call about always having choices! What’s that Dumbledore line from book 1? it’s our choices not our abilities that make us who we are?
I kind of wanted Draco to marry Pansy Parkingson or whatever the eff her name was– the one who wanted to offer Harry up to Voldemort was they were evacuating the school.
I reread the epilogue the morning after I finished it because I was so happy with how it ended, I thought it was a dream. I’m glad it’s not.